


The Kids Aren't Alright

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, basically just a lot of canonverse sads, jm!elf, secret santa present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 06:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2840672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Marco was a star, a burning piece of the infinity of the universe that lent light to all those about him. And Eren and I, we could never hope to match him in terms of supernovas.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kids Aren't Alright

**Author's Note:**

>   
> _Blessed be the boys time can’t capture_   
> _On film or between the sheets_   
> _I always fall from your window to the pitch black streets_
> 
> _And with the black banners raised as the crooked smiles fade_  
>  _Former heroes who quit too late_  
>  _Just wanna fill up the trophy case again_
> 
> Fall Out Boy - The Kids Arent Alright
> 
> Written for the JM Secret Santa exchange - a present for [Emma](http://black-wldows.tumblr.com/)

Screams, splitting through the air, wild and terrified, breaking through the pounding in my skull. I don’t look up, don’t check to see who it was this time – I can’t. I have to keep going, have to concentrate on protecting myself; protecting my squad. Protecting Marco.

My boots slam into the tiled roof, grit and dust spitting up to brush against cheeks as I skid, heart in throat. A wild glance to the left, to the right, confirms that the entirety of my squad is still gathered about me; a black undercut to my left and behind, still safe. Sweaty hands grasping at my 3D manoeuvre gear, I squeeze the trigger tightly, send myself spiralling off into space. They’ll follow my lead – we’ve done this in training a million times, everyone know the dr-

Another scream, far closer than the others, in its infancy, an exclamation of fear, swelling to a full-fledged shriek of pain. My eyes dart towards the sound, flicking to my left then behind, following the trail of this scream, this cry, this all-too familiar voice forming around harsh, harsh syllables.

                “J-Jean! _Jean!_ Help me, Je-“

My head whips back, heart rate gaining even as time slows to a stop. The space through which I falter, the looming hands that grasp at me, all become but an instant of black and white as I see him, eyes wide and terrified, held firmly within the grasp of a monster.

The name is on my lips as I spin, as my veins freeze, as that great hand that holds him captive rises, rises, climbing ever higher … until it opens and he falls with a cacophony of snapping teeth and cut off cries, a bright splash of red against the monochrome of this nightmare.

Maybe I scream – maybe I don’t. I am Numb, I am Falling, spiralling down through the air, ground moving toward me all too quickly. That fact seems to have little meaning to me, far overshadowed by the fact that _that was Marco, Marco just died, Marco’s dead –_

I am ripped from the nightmare in a tangle of sweaty, clutching hands and gasped breaths, writhing in my attempts to escape the sheets that cling, dragging me back down. Keeling forward, chest heaving, I squeeze my eyes shut until pinpoints of colour dance in my vision. _It was just a dream. It was just a dream, and Marco’s okay, he’s here._

As I do my best to calm myself, pulling deep breaths through my nose and pushing them back into the atmosphere through my mouth, I relax against the back of my bed, head spinning. I’d had nightmares before; many, many times before. They were a hard thing to escape when death was your daily companion. But Marco … he was sacred, he was Untouchable, surely my brain should know that at least. I felt like I had betrayed myself in some fundamental and unexplainable fashion.

A sigh, and I run a hand roughly through my hair, push my tangled sheets further down the mattress. It doesn’t matter what sort of fucked up things my brain was doing to me, I couldn’t let them affect me too badly. I had to protect Marco; I had promised myself, so that was what I would do.

I glance over at his bed, pushed up against mine, my gaze a fleeting motion that I know I no longer had any reason to commit. I couldn’t quite make him out, in the darkness and the quiet – I needed to _see_ him, to brush a hand along his cheek, brush lips against his neck. Carefully, cautiously, I raise myself to my knees, inching across the divide until I can reach out a shaking hand, breaths too loud in the silent night. Fingers stretching, searching for a freckled face; only to fall into emptiness, nothingness.

He isn’t there.

Heart racing once more, I straighten so quickly that I crack my head against the bed above me, hands darting to cradle my skull as I let a low moan escape my lips. Head throbbing and thoughts racing, I slide from my bed, feet thudding into the floor. Where could he be? Why would he have left?

While my rational half speaks comfortingly, pointing out that he’s likely just gone to the bathroom, my more unreasonable self, still kicked into overdrive from the events of my nightmare, scream a far more frightening story. He’d been kidnapped, he’d run away, he was dead – however you looked at it, he was gone and I’m alone.

I haven’t even fully formed the decision to wake Eren before I’m at his bedside, hands curling around a shoulder and shaking softly as I whisper for him to wake up, to find Marco. My plea of _‘Help me’_ curdles in my throat, even as I look up at bright green eyes rapidly blinking beneath the furrow of a brow. Eren means so much to me, and I need him – but we both know these thoughts were things that had to remain unspoken, thoughts that were far too dangerous to breathe into being. We kept them for the night, and dark, silent places that could be forgotten all too easily.

He stares down at me, sleepy and confused, hoarse words dripping from his lips as he asks why the fuck I’m waking him up at this ungodly hour. Mustering a glare, I manage to growl at him in a tone that’s angry enough that I can pretend that things are okay, I’m fine. Unfortunately, I follow that up with a quiet, “Marco’s missing.” soft and anxious enough that he’s bolting up, scrambling down from his bed in a manner so unrefined that I can’t help but let out a quiet snicker. He glares, doesn’t comment, because we both know the amount of shit we’ll be in if we’re caught.

Neither of us speaks again until we’re safely out and away, free enough for the biting cold air to wrap its spidery fingers about us. In front of me, Eren tramps swiftly through the dirt, head up, chin tilted back, eyes searching. I watch as the wind tugs at his hair, and do my very best not to think about running my fingers through it.

I yank my eyes away, study my feet for a few moments as I tug my composure back into view, gasping a painful-cold breath of air. Then I am Me again, shoulders back and head tilted to the side, appearance in no way ruined by ruffled hair and rumpled clothes.

We make our way to the bathrooms; find them unfortunately empty. Eren’s rubbing the palm of a hand against a furrowed brow, eyes closed and mouth a thin thin line. I survey him carefully, quietly suggest that maybe we should check the training fields.

And we do, because there’s not many other places to go, and the possible alternatives are far worse than a little more walking.

It’s there that we find him – almost missing that dark, hunched shape in the grass, knees pulled up to a chest and faced down-turned. I’m the one who spots him, a small silhouette against the vastness of the star-ridden sky, my heart skipping a million beats before I can even think to catch Eren’s sleeve and pull.

                “There.” I tell him softly, a finger to indicate. There is none of the bluster we show in the daylight hours, none of the banter with which to hide our feelings behind.

A nod, and he follows, letting me take the lead, letting me be the one to lay a gentle hand on Marco’s shoulder. He stiffens, starts, head whipping around. The whites of wide pupils shine in the starlight, until he relaxes, softens, a small breath working its way through his lips.

                “Oh. Jean. It’s just you.”

                “Mm. It’s me. Eren too, though.”

His gaze darts behind me, obvious surprise seeping through his tone as he makes the next query.           “Eren too? Why are you both here?”

I barely even shudder, barely even allow the scenes from my nightmare play through my head once again. _‘Because I thought I’d lost you.’_ I want to tell him. _‘Because I watched you die.’_

_‘Because I love you.’_

Eren beats me to it, taking an easy step closer as his dark silhouette raises shadowy arms, fingers threading together to cup the back of his head.

                “Jean had a bad dream.” he sneers, a little of our usual derision creeping into his tone. “And then you weren’t there to comfort him so he got _scared.”_

I should scoff at him, should ridicule him, should turn around and punch him in the face. But it’s awfully hard to keep up appearances in the dark of the night, and none of his words have been untrue. So I just shrug, and drop to the ground, shuffling until my side presses against Marco’s, heat radiating between us.

                “I was worried about you.” comes my quiet admission.

I feel his soft exhale, sense the movement as his face turns towards me.  His hand moves, fingertips searching along my side until they skim down my wrist and curl through my own, palms flush against one another. I settle into the comforting warmth, the heat radiating between us until I can almost convince myself that we are somewhere else and death is a possibility I needn’t fear.

Our quiet comfort is interrupted by an awkward cough, the scuffing of feet against clods of grass.

                “I – uh. I’ll head back inside now, I guess.”

And Eren is turning; I can hear the dragging feet and sense the teeth worrying at a lip. This is how it is – this is how it has to be. Marco and I – what we have hasn’t been named, not yet, but we all know it’s only a matter of time. Eren is a different. Neither of us can speak that bond into being, for fear of what might come after. And as I stare silently down at the shadowy shapes of my bent knees as they dance in the darkness, I know that’s how it needs to stay.

But then Marco’s shifting, pulling away from my side, arm reaching out and fingers clasping at the cool air, the silence of the night, a bunched handful of fabric. He tugs at it, pulls it back, draws it closer. And I can’t help but feel like someone should have told Marco how this works – someone should have explained the finer details of how this was supposed to progress.

But none of us had counted on Marco Bodt, and his ability to defy all expectations.

He tugs at Eren’s sleeve once again, a small, tenuous movement. Head turning follow the line of his arm, tilting up until it reaches that place from which, in the daylight, shining green eyes would look down on us like beacons.

                “Are you going to sit down?” he asks quietly, words a quiet breath, floating through the air like a promise.

Questions rise in my throat, unspoken words of feelings and fears and other dangerous things. I am given no time to voice them, however, before Eren shuffles closer and drops to Marco’s side, their arms still linked by that unwavering grip. The movement flits through the steady night air, as he pulls his feet towards himself, leans in closer to the boy between us. The silence, while comfortable, is weighted with a million words left unsaid. Words that hang from the tip of my tongue and threaten to drip from my lips, words I must bite back and ignore.

Words that scare me far more than they have any right to.

Eren is the one to shatter the loaded quiet, an event that, while unexpected, remains startling. He softly asks Marco why he left, why he hadn’t woken one of us.

The answers take their time coming, long breaths of air signalling the passing of moments. When they finally arrive, they are broken and awkward, the speaker as unsure of himself as his listeners.

                “I – I couldn’t sleep again. I’m … I’ve been thinking too much. About everyone leaving. About us leaving one another.”

Perhaps I should find comfort in the fact that I’m not the only one whose mind has been weighted heavily with these thoughts, but I locate only sadness in the knowledge that Marco, too has been worrying about the future. I find myself wondering how the knowledge of our looming parting has been affecting Eren. Marco and I; we have little reason for apprehension. We would be staying together, safe inside the interior. It was Eren who would be alone, Eren who would be constantly face to face with danger. We’d always known that the three of us wouldn’t be staying together – from that first, blustering meeting, when I was all too glad of that knowledge, to now, when it was regarded with a sad sort of resignation.

The laugh that Eren manages to muster is a sad, anxious sort of affair that tells me far more than any words would. Eren is sad, and Eren is scared. This fact slams into me, even as he brushes aside the concern and gives a blithe answer about how at least he won’t have to worry about the two of us slowing him down.

I know he’s lying, and it’s likely that both Marco, and Eren himself, are aware of this also. But it’s far easier to skip over our issues than concentrate on the unfixable, and savouring the time we have, or whatever, is meant to make things easier.

Maybe that’s why it stuns me so much when Marco dips his head and quietly admits that he’s been considering joining with Eren.

                “I just … I’ve been thinking about how many more people I would be able to protect. There’s plenty of good soldiers going into the Military Police but – but the Recon Corps needs everyone they can get.”

I open my mouth to say something, to ask when he’d been thinking about this, why he hadn’t mentioned it to me. To ask why he is so so selfless, when I haven’t even thought about others, when I’ve been far too busy thinking of nothing but Him and the life we could live, safe together. But he’s already squeezing my hand, fingers biting into mine in a way that is almost Painful, and my questions shatter, still contained within the cavern of my chest, as he chokes out his next words.

                “I’m – it’s only .. I’m so scared, _so_ afraid about what might happen to me. And I know, I know it’s terrible, and it’s selfish and I –“

A choked, short sound, and his words stop, halt, his tears falling as I fall apart. Marco. Oh Marco. How could he not see how terribly, wonderfully strong he was, how he supported us all without even realising? I search for the words to tell him how much he means, and I fall abysmally short.

So, instead, I settle for shifting closer, pressing my shoulder firmly against his in what I hope appears as a show of solidarity. I want to do more, say more, be more, but I am discovering all too swiftly that there isn’t a set of magic words to make someone realise their worth.

I wanted to be there for Marco, but it’s hard to help someone when they’re so completely concentrated on being strong.

Even as he releases his grip on me to rub the back of a hand against damp eyes, he is forcing a smile, teeth flashing in the glint of starlight. A short, tired laugh, and he shakes his head, gaze dancing everywhere but Eren and I’s faces.

                “It’s – it’s nothing though, don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

It’s clear that Marco is Not Fine, and perhaps he’s been on the far side of that divide for a lot longer than I ever would have guessed. I seek out his hand once again, warm, strong palm sliding over mine. Eren speaks, a few short words that do a more than inadequate job in terms of both reassurance and expression. I understand him though. We both – the two of us, and Marco –

Marco was a star, a burning piece of the infinity of the universe that lent light to all those about him. And Eren and I, we could never hope to match him in terms of supernovas. He was gorgeous, we were inadequate, and none of us knew how to express those facts.

He dips his head as he shifts the conversation, tone still awkward, phrases still halting and broken. His next query clearly deflects the attention from himself, back onto me, my wellbeing. That kindness I had no hopes of ever earning, returning over and over.

                “So, Jean … you had a nightmare? What was it about?”

I feel the fire in my cheeks return, a flare of heat in the biting cold. But with it – with it is the memories of screams, of red, red stains and freckles mixing with speckles of blood. A hitch in my chest, and I have to concentrate on the warm hand still in my grip, the warm body still at my side. Tether myself to it – to the knowledge that Marco is here, and alive, and I’m useless and spend far too much time whining.

                “It – uh. It was about you. You … um, you dying.”

A sharp inhalation on my far right tell me that Eren hadn’t been expecting that admission – the long, low breath out afterwards makes me wonder if he feels guilty for giving me shit about it.

The subject of both my dreams and my nightmares is silent as he considers this, considers the weakness that leaves me desperate for his presence, his reassurance. A flutter of fear in my chest is enough for the anxiety to set in, biting thoughts of inadequacy and irritation. But he sweeps them all aside with a single movement; as he leans in to me, head falling softly to my shoulder.

I try not to stiffen too abruptly as silken strands brush against my neck and warm breath slips past the low collar of my shirt. When Marco speaks, the vibrations shudder their way through me, and that connectedness makes my heart flutter in a way should probably be embarrassing.

                “We’re all going to die one day, aren’t we?”

His words are truth, and I have no reason to stiffen. Yes, one day we will all die. But the resigned manner in which he speaks about that fact cuts me to the quick. I don’t _want_ Marco to be resigned about his death. He needs to be Strong, he needs to Fight. I wish I could do both for him, but I can only achieve so much. His speech continues, and I shift closer, squeeze his hand harder, hate myself for being entirely unable to give him the comfort he needs.

                “It’s pointless to lose sleep over it. It’s something we can’t avoid. But, at the moment … we’re here. We’re here and we have our whole lives ahead of us. We’ve still got plenty of time together, so don’t worry too much!”

There are words, so many words, words that gather inside me and threaten to burst through my chest.

I don’t want to worry Marco. I want to spend the rest of my life with you and Eren. Please don’t leave me.

But the silence reigns as I curl over and curl inside myself and let my admission of just how much I need them slip away.

 

xxx

 

The tears slip down my cheeks, flowing far more freely than all those words I had bottled up so long ago. The weight of sweaty bedsheets and phrases left unsaid leave me gasping for breath, fingers twisting in thin fabric as I grasp for a sense of reality long lost.

And there’s a name on my lips, dry and cracking, spiralling its way into the night air. A pointless name, a helpless name, a name to which I will not receive an answer.

A hand on my side, splayed fingers lain firmly against a shoulder, and I start, find myself pulling back, head snapping around. But it’s only Eren, and he’s whispering my name, telling me that it’s okay, it’s okay, he understand.

I should turn away, hide my tears, be strong. But it’s hard, it’s so hard, to keep going on, to protect everyone when the one person I had sworn I would never leave had disappeared in a pillar of smoke and flame. So, instead, I let him. Let him nudge me to the side, let him clamber onto the mattress with me, spine stiff against the backboard. Neither of us touch, the balance of our worlds too fragile to retain their monotony after such an action.

Hands tightening in the cotton of my sheets, I pull in a long draught of air, holding it, holding myself together. The sigh of it leaving my body sounds all too sad and lonely – but still Eren makes no movement, arms firmly encircling bent knees, eyes trained on the distant darkness.

Neither of us was made for comfort. We don’t understand the words, the smile, the touching gesture that is needed to make one feel at peace within themselves.

So, instead, we sit. Silent and sad, all too aware of the heavy space between us where another once belonged. 


End file.
